


after us

by bluewalk



Series: 30_onepiece: Sanji [22]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-28 14:03:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluewalk/pseuds/bluewalk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[#18 flood] <em>the walls around him are trembling, he can feel it</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	after us

“They’re not going to make it,” the last of the submarine’s pirates tells him, his mouth red and bloody, and he smiles with gaps in his teeth. Sanji kicks him hard enough that his skull cracks against the wall. Then the man is quiet.

Sanji can’t breathe. The walls around him are trembling, he can _feel_ it. The water is up to his knees and it’s throwing off his balance and he’s broken his ankle and he is going mad and he can’t breathe.

“Luffy,” he says. “Luffy, help me.”

His captain looks pale and drawn and so exhausted that it frightens him. “Luffy,” he calls again, and Luffy glances at him, looking so helpless that it makes Sanji want to drop to his knees.

“I’m trying,” Luffy says, and he is trying, he’s trying with everything he’s got left, but the seawater is pulling relentlessly at him and leaving him limp and powerless. Sanji can see the wild desperation in Luffy’s eyes. He knows he looks the same.

“Out of the water,” Sanji gasps. “Out. Out!” He limps over to Luffy, ignoring the pain shooting up his leg, threatening to make him black out. “On my shoulders,” he snaps, frantic. “Hurry!”

Luffy all but falls against him, and Sanji tries desperately to lift him onto his back, to get Luffy’s feet out of the water. “Go,” he begs, feeling weak and useless. “Please, Luffy, _hurry_.”

Luffy clings to shoulders and Sanji can feel Luffy’s labored breaths on the back of his neck. And then Luffy moves, pulling himself up, using Sanji’s linked hands as a foothold, finally managing to stand on Sanji’s shoulders with Sanji’s fingers wrapped tightly around his ankles.

“They’re still in there,” Sanji rasps. “And I can’t, Luffy. I can’t.”

“I know,” Luffy says. “We’ll get them out, Sanji.”

The door is tall and wide and made of cold iron. Behind it is a room rapidly filling with water. Behind it are his nakama.

“I know you’re hurt, but hold still, okay, Sanji?”

He nods.

“We’re going to get them out. Hold still, okay?”

He nods again.

Luffy starts to pummel the door with rapid-fire punches, and Sanji bites back a strangled cry from the pain in his leg. The iron is bending slowly, giving way. Sanji tries not to think how much the other room had filled up by now.

Luffy pulls his arm back, stretching it as far as he can in the small space. Sanji closes his eyes, grits his teeth in preparation, but the aftershocks of Luffy’s final attack still make him whimper.

Then the wall of water hits him, and he barely has enough sense left to grab onto Luffy and hold him tightly to his chest. His back hits the opposite wall of the submarine and they’re completely submerged. He tries frantically to get upright, to get their heads above the water, but Luffy is dead weight in his arms and his leg is useless.

But then Luffy is wrenched from his grasp and then Sanji is being pulled up and up.

“Cook!”

Zoro is holding him up by his collar, looking and sounding breathless.

“Is everyone all right?” he coughs. “Everyone—” he coughs again, salt water in his lungs.

“Fine, they’re fine, Franky just took them to the Shark Submerge, they’re going to be fine.”

“Oh,” he says. His head threatens to go under again, but Zoro yanks him back up.

“Grab onto something!”

Like what, he wants to retort, but he only manages to swallow more water. Zoro pulls him over to the ladder set into the wall of the submarine and guides his hands to one of the rungs.

“Franky’s going to be back,” Zoro is saying. “The Shark Submerge only holds three, but they’ll cram themselves in somehow, and then Franky will come back down for us.”

He can’t tread water very well, so Zoro has to keep pulling him back up by the collar. “Yeah,” he manages. He wonders if Zoro knows how fast the submarine is sinking. “Whose idea was this? To take four devil fruit users underwater?”

“Guess,” Zoro intones gravely, and Sanji laughs a sputtering laugh.

So they wait. The submarine is filling up fast and there is less and less air left. It’s cold. Even Zoro’s lips are turning blue. Water laps against their chins.

“G-Gonna pummel F-F-Franky for taking so g-goddamned long.”

“I call f-first dibs.”

“Fuck you. First dibs are m-mine.”

“T-Together, then.”

“Bastard won’t know w-what hit him.”

Then, “HEEEEEY BROS. STILL SUPER IN THERE?”

“He is s-s-so dead.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 29 October 2011
> 
> Après nous, le Déluge!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Chinese translation on "after us"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/411961) by [renata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/renata/pseuds/renata)




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